Early play-based learning helps children develop skills and knowledge before elementary school, and provides an essential foundation for learning in later years.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg
Early childhood education isn’t about warehousing children so adults can go to work. There is an ethical imperative to support a paradigm shift in how our society values educating young children.
It’s counterproductive to push your child to read a whole chapter book independently if they are not ready. You might turn them off reading altogether. Here’s what to do instead.
A new study by early childhood researchers looks at four important features of a centre’s physical environment.
Locating early learning programs in schools provides stable programming infrastructure and allows for potential collaborations between early childhood educators and teachers.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
Parents and caregivers are vital partners in education, and together, educators and families can ease back-to-school jitters and help make this an exciting and positive transition for children.
Canada is preventing provinces and territories from using federal child-care dollars to transform schools into one-stop centres for young children.
(Pexels/Yan Krukov)
Canada has much to learn from other countries about better ways of providing learning and care for children.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, plays with children in an early learning and child care centre in Brampton, Ont., March 28, 2022.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Where new early learning and child-care programs are located, how they are designed, built and resourced, and what they teach can either add to the problem of climate change or help mitigate it.
Ongoing monitoring of students in early grades will be important to identify how missing out on in-person classes has affected students.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
The lack of a fully interactive environment in kindergarten due to pandemic school closures may negatively impact some children’s learning in later grades.
Child-care policy needs to be designed to ensure children have stable access to high-quality care.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
The system has several elements and many problems. Making it fit for purpose will take a lot of work and even more resources than those that have just been announced.
Ontario’s child care policy now creates a universal, flat-fee child care for medium and high-income families
but doesn’t guarantee subsidies to low-income families.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
Marilyn Campbell, Queensland University of Technology and Yan Qi, Queensland University of Technology
This week’s announcements will add to the need to train more early childhood workers and to ensure they are more diverse in a way that better reflects our multicultural society.
Through a loving connection, children learn what it means to take safe risks.
(Pexels/Anna Shvets)
A study of students across Canada between 2004 and 2015 provides an estimate of anxiety symptoms in kindergarteners, and can serve as a baseline for comparing children’s anxiety after COVID-19.
Kindergarten teachers were tasked with adapting a hands-on, play-based curricula in a virtual environment – a nearly impossible task even without parenting one’s own children at the same time.
(Shutterstock)
Kindergarten educators who taught from home during COVID-19 and who were primarily responsible for their own children self-reported poorer mental health than those without these responsibilities.
One project with the Art Gallery of Western Australia, researchers and children saw children respond to a painting by Wangkatjunga/Walmajarri artist Ngarralja Tommy May.
(Mindy Blaise and Jo Pollitt)
Researchers and educators with the Climate Action Childhood network are generating responses to climate change alongside young children.
Almost as many trained early childhood educators work outside licensed child care as in it. Many say they would return to the field if offered decent work.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
Staff recruitment and retention challenges aren’t seen in public child-care centres, where educators are paid substantially more, are unionized and have professional development opportunities.
Ontario is creating far below the 200,000 to 300,000 early learning and care spaces needed to address the demand that will arise as parent fees decline.
(Benson Low/Unsplash)
Among provinces, Ontario is the least generous supporter of its childhood educator workforce. Parents pay the price in available child-care spaces if a staffing recruitment crisis does not improve.
Adjunct Professor, Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at Ontario Institute for the Study of Education (OISE) and Senior Policy Fellow at the Atkinson Centre, University of Toronto
Professor, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development, Owerko Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary